Q: I am a former lifeguard chief for San Diego. Because I have dealt with dead-whale removals, lifeguards in Del Mar asked my advice about a dead gray whale that had floated ashore. It originally beached at Del Mar. City lifeguards towed it some 5 miles offshore, where it didn’t sink but floated south to a state beach in San Diego. State personnel trucked it to a landfill. Who should cover those costs? I concluded that Del Mar caused the problem and should help defray the state’s expenses. Ethically correct? — B. Chris Brewster, San Diego

A: I can tell you what I do with my dead whales. No, wait, I’m thinking of something that happened at our last family reunion. And he wasn’t dead; he’d just had a little too much to drink. And he wasn’t a cetacean; not of any kind.

I’d say that you are a surfside Solomon. The beach in San Diego was coping with a situation created by Del Mar. It is tough to know whether Del Mar merely blundered by failing to anticipate the folly of dragging a whale carcass out to sea or whether it deliberately sought to pass along its dead-whale problem to the next town south, but either way it must clean up the mess it made for San Diego.

It is also difficult to know — and I say this with utmost respect for your profession and experience — why anybody sought legal advice from a lifeguard. If I were drowning, I wouldn’t call a lawyer. On the other hand, if I were to drown a lawyer — in some crazy dream; clearly nobody should actually drown anyone — I might ask a lifeguard’s advice.

Update: After a “typically bureaucratic discussion,” Brewster reports, “cooler heads prevailed” in Del Mar, and they heeded his counsel. An official there e-mailed him to say that they agreed to share the state’s costs, “paying $750 of the disposal fee,” and that they suspected but could not prove “that the whale started out in Huntington Beach” — some 60 miles to the north of Del Mar — “and they towed it out to sea just as we did.”

Q: I organized a fundraiser to pay for our son’s participation in a week-long treatment program. A local restaurant owner joined in, collecting funds from patrons specifically for this. Ultimately our family paid for the treatment ourselves, so we asked the owner to donate what she’d raised to the nonprofit group that treated our son. She is reluctant. Must she do so? — Name Withheld, Portland, Ore.

A: Because the surplus money cannot be used as advertised, the restaurant owner should return it to the donors or get their consent to use it in some other way. If she cannot do that, then your proposal is a good one. It comes as close as anyone can to duplicating the purpose for which contributions were solicited.

The restaurateur can’t simply hand you the money to squander on riotous living: That would betray the trust of the donors who intended it for therapeutic purposes. She can’t keep it to, oh, say, install a nice wine cellar. That would be what Escoffier called “fraud” or no doubt would have, had he been acquainted with the circumstances and trained in American law — but what a loss to cooking!

Update: After suggesting various options, including using the money to provide this family gift certificates at her restaurant, the owner agreed to donate the money to the group that treated the son.